


The Final Verse

by TheMagicLlama



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Dream Smp, Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Gen, Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP Spoilers (Video Blogging RPF), Minecraft, My First AO3 Post, My First Work in This Fandom, Wilbur Soot is Phil's Son, Wilbur Tommy Tubbo and Techno are brothers, idk what other tags to put, l'manberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27767836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMagicLlama/pseuds/TheMagicLlama
Summary: “There WAS a special place. And that special place existed once, I know it did. But…“I don’t think it can exist again.”This is just a conversion from video to writing of the final button room scene between Phil and Wilbur. It contains spoilers for the Dream SMP finale/war streams. Much of the dialogue is taken directly from the scene, but there are some things I've left out or added in. Enjoy!“Mm-hmm. In L’manberg, you said.”
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & TommyInnit & Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, Dave | Technoblade & Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson, Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	The Final Verse

**Author's Note:**

> (Content warnings: explosions, impalement, major character death.)

“Do you know what this button is?”

Philza and Wilbur stood across from each other. The confined stone walls of the button room surrounded them. Above them, the glowstone lights flickered dimly.

“Uh-huh,” said Phil with a short nod. “I do.”

They were alone. Wilbur knew that above them, the citizens of L’manberg were celebrating their victory over Schlatt. If he concentrated enough, he could almost hear the crackling of the fireworks. He could almost hear the cheers of the people—or maybe he was imagining it.

It didn’t matter. One push of the button, and it would all be gone.

Wilbur was not ashamed or alarmed that his father had found him; in fact, it seemed right. All of a sudden he wanted to tell him everything about the past few months: how he’d created a beautiful country with the help of his friends. How they’d lost it all to Schlatt. How, at last, they had taken it back, and how he now found himself standing in front of the button that could lead to its demise.

“And have you heard,” he pressed, “the song, have you heard the song? The one I’ve scribbled on the walls?” His voice rose with pride. “I was making this big point, see, that, that there WAS a special place, but it’s not there anymore.” He gazed up at Phil, eyes glinting.

Phil looked down at Wilbur with sorrow and kindness. “It IS there,” he said gently, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder. “You’ve just won it back, Will.”

Wilbur tore himself away from Philza and struck the wooden chair in the center of the room, sending it flying. “I am always SO CLOSE to pressing that button!” His eyes were drawn back to the bright red button in the center of the wall across from the entrance corridor.

He tore his gaze away from the button and began pacing. “I’ve been here seven or eight times— _seven or eight times_ , Dad.” He ran a hand through his hair. “So many times. My nation, the nation that I helped build…”

Phil stared at Wilbur helplessly. He wondered what had happened to his son, what had brought on this frantic desire for destruction. “And you want to just blow it all up?”

Wilbur stopped and sank back against a wall. He slid to the floor, quivering, and said nothing.

Finally, he whispered, “Yeah, I do.”

He looked up, and his pained brown eyes met Phil’s blue eyes. “I think I really do, Dad. I think, I think…”

Phil put his hands in his pockets, not sure what else to do with them. “You fought so hard to get this land back.”

“I don’t even know if it works anymore,” Wilbur breathed. He edged away from the wall and glanced up at the button. “I don’t even know if it works. I could, I _could_ , press it, and it might…” He reached out a tentative hand, which stopped inches short.

“Is that really a risk you want to take?” said Phil with a sad chuckle. He fell silent as he observed his son, in the tattered brown trench coat, shivering on the floor of a secret room built under the nation he’d just won back. “There is a lot of TNT potentially connected to that button,” he said quietly.

Wilbur put his head in his hands, shoulders trembling, and didn’t respond.

After a time, the trembling of Wilbur’s shoulders eased and slid into an even rising and falling as he breathed deeply. He looked up, and there was no trace of tears in his eyes.

“Dad.” He stood up, slowly, brushing one hand against the wall. It ran over the words he’d scratched there. My L’manberg. I heard there was a special place. My L’manberg…

“Will.”

Wilbur exhaled. “There was a saying by a traitor, Dad, someone once part of L’manberg.” He looked up and met Phil’s eyes. “I don’t know if you’ve heard of Eret?”

“Yeah, I’ve… heard of Eret.”

“He had a saying, Dad.”

Wilbur turned, staring at the button.

Phil stared at Wilbur, wishing his son would turn around. He wished he could see his face. He wanted to crouch down and hold out his arms, and he wanted Will to rush into them, and he wanted to embrace Wilbur and tell him that it’d all be alright. That the monsters under his bed weren’t real. That he was safe, and it was all okay.

Wilbur did not turn around. His shoulders slumped, his chin tilted up, and his fingers spread, as if he might hold an entire world in each hand, and it wouldn’t be enough.

“It was never meant to be.”

He slammed his elbow into the button.

“Oh my God,” Phil gasped. He heard the click, he heard the hiss of the TNT behind the wall. “You didn’t.”

_BOOM!_

It all blew open.

Wilbur and Phil were blasted backwards as a blaze of fire and destructive force tore through L’manberg, ripping open a vast chasm and exposing the small room to the open. The walls shook. Phil pressed against the back wall of the room, feeling the tremors in the stones under his fingers, and watched the chain of explosions in horror.

It was several minutes before the world stopped shaking, and they were able to observe the wreckage. Dusty sunlight filtered through the smoke, throwing WIlbur and Phil in the button room into view. The light illuminated the rubble and gave the crumbling chunks of stone halos of gold.

“Oh my Gods,” Phil breathed. “ _WILL_.”

Wilbur sank to his knees before the sight of the staggering destruction. His destruction. He had created this nation, and now he had killed it. He’d written the beginning; now he’d written the end. The conclusion to his epic, the finale to his song. The final verse.

“It’s all gone!” Phil cried.

“MY L’MANBERG!” Wilbur roared, spreading his hands. “My unfinished symphony, FOREVER UNFINISHED!”

He turned to look back at his father, who nearly stumbled out of shock at the look on his son’s face: any trace of the Wilbur that had once been there was gone, replaced by a feverish insanity that made Philza’s blood run cold.

“If I can’t have this, no one can,” breathed Wilbur. “And now they won’t.” He raised his hands to the sun. “NOW THEY WON’T!”

“Oh my God,” Phil muttered. _My son._

Wilbur turned and seized Phil by the front of his robes. “Kill me, Dad. Kill me. Dad, kill me now. Here, stab me with my sword.” He fumbled to remove his sword from his belt with his shaking fingers. “Murder me now. Do it. Kill me now. Murder me!” The sword fell at Phil’s feet with a sharp clang.

Wilbur stared up at Phil hopefully.

Phil met Wilbur’s gaze, his heart wrenching. “No.”

“They’ll all want you to,” Wilbur whispered. He waved in the direction of the gaping hole in the wall. “They’ll all want me dead after I destroyed their country. Go ask them, they’ll demand it. They’ll demand my head on a stake for this. There’s no escaping it. Kill me, Dad, kill me.”

“No!”

“Kill me!” Wilbur demanded.

“No! Will, why are you asking me to do this?”

Wilbur leaned back, his eyes flicking back and forth, searching for words that weren’t there. He didn’t know how to explain it. Perhaps it was that he didn’t see himself going on, now that his nation and everything he’d worked for was gone. Who was he, if not the sum of his achievements? And what were his achievements now, but gone?

He glanced out at the destruction, and through the smoke he saw three figures standing on the far side of the chasm. Tommy, Tubbo, and Technoblade. His brothers. They were staring at the wreckage, struggling to accept what had happened, struggling to accept that their L’manberg was gone.

Ah, that was it. It was that powerlessness in the face of demise, that denial, the moment when you realize— _it’s really gone._

He couldn’t just force the citizens of L’manberg to feel it. He had to feel it himself.

That was why he had to die.

“Do it, Dad,” he said quietly. “Kill me.”

Tears gathered in Phil’s eyes; he brushed them away angrily. “I can’t do that.”

“Kill me.” Wilbur picked up the sword and pressed it into Phil’s hand.

“No!”

“Kill me!”

“Will—you’re my SON!”

Wilbur felt like smashing his head against a wall. “LOOK! Look how much work went into this—and now it’s gone!” He flung his arm in the direction of the smoking rubble.

“No matter what you do—” Phil’s voice broke, and he started over. “No matter what you’ve done…”

“Do it,” Wilbur whispered. “Do it. Dad, kill me. Kill me! DO IT!”

“Wilbur…”

“I DESTROYED THE NATION, DAD! KILL ME! DO IT!”

Philza’s face suddenly went blank as stone. Gripping the sword, he shoved it into Wilbur’s stomach. It passed easily, too easily, through his body, emerging through the other side painted in blood.

Dark starbursts appeared on the front and back of Wilbur’s jacket as the blood soaked through his clothes. He sagged against Phil’s arms, a contented smile spreading across his face.

Phil shook his head, tears beginning to stream down his face. “You couldn’t just win.”

Wilbur stared unseeingly past him. Phil didn’t understand. He didn’t know what this meant to Wilbur. To lose _was_ to win.

To die incomplete, to go out along with his unfinished symphony. It was wrong and terrible, which made it right and perfect. Darkness crawled over Wilbur’s vision. He felt the pull of nonexistence, and the panic of never being able to go back. He felt the helplessness that accompanies loss, and he experienced the futility of it. Of everything. Of trying. Of living.

He died restlessly, struggling for every last breath, as his father held him and whispered a million regrets.

It was all he had ever wanted.


End file.
